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Bill on School Lunch Is Scaled Back. Criticism of School Lunch Isn’t.

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Bill on School Lunch Is Scaled Back. Criticism of School Lunch Isn’t.

By Kim Severson March 26, 2010 5:03 pmMarch 26, 2010 5:03 pm

Holly Farrell/ABCJamie Oliver at a school cafeteria in Huntington, W.Va.

It’s been an unusually tough month for the people who make school lunches.

Sunday, six million people watched a sneak preview of ABC’s “Food Revolution,’’ a reality series in which the British chef Jamie Oliver storms the kitchens of Huntington, W.Va., to improve the town’s collective diet. (The series begins Friday at 8 p.m.)

Mr. Oliver was driven to tears after a humiliating rejection by both pizza-loving students and the women of the lunchroom, or the “lovely girls” as he calls them. The cafeteria workers ended up looking so bad that the national School Nutrition Association followed up with a press release in its defense.

Meanwhile, in Washington, where Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign continues to point a finger at the school lunch line, a Senate committee on Wednesday cut by more than half President Obama’s proposal to spend a record $10 billion more on child nutrition programs over 10 years, including school food.

Although school food directors and the growing ranks of lunch room reformers are disappointed with the numbers coming out of Washington, people who have been working with the Department of Agriculture and Congress to improve school food say the bill’s $4.5 billion increase is an historic improvement.

“It’s critical we get started,” said Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, chairwoman of the Senate committee on agriculture and the architect of the bill. Senator Lincoln said critics need to understand that the legislation proposes the first real increase over inflation that the school food program has had in several decades. And in the current economic climate, any money is a victory.

“We’d all like to do more and we’re going to try but we’ve got to get started,’’ she said. “If we just separate and go to our separate fox holes we don’t get to the end product.”

The Child Nutrition Act comes up for financing every five years. It pays for school food and other nutrition programs for lower-income children. It’s also the mechanism legislators can use to change the rules that govern those programs.

The bill headed to the Senate floor would increase by about 6 cents the $2.68 that schools can get for each lunch — far less than the $1 a lunch increase a coalition of school food reform groups have been campaigning for.

But Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, said the bill was still worth supporting. She has been fighting to improve school nutrition standards for 17 years.

“This is the strongest child nutrition reauthorization bill I have ever seen,” she said. “We can’t go from candy bars to apples in one fell swoop.”

In addition to the increase in financing, Ms. Wootan and Department of Agriculture staff members said a number of less obvious changes in nutritional rules and financing for special programs will improve what is served in schools as soon as next year.

For example, milk is the biggest single source of saturated fat on the lunch line. The bill would allow only skim and 1 percent milk to be offered, banning whole and 2 percent. And schools will be required to make sure children have water with their meals.

At least $40 million is available for farm-to-school programs and school gardens. Another $10 million will go toward pilot programs intended to add organic food. And millions more have been added to train cafeteria staff members.

One of the biggest changes involves food sold in places other than the cafeteria, like vending machines, sporting events and hallway fund-raisers. The law would give the Department of Agriculture power to set limits on nutrients like sodium and fat in all food sold on campus as well as setting limits on the number of bake sales and other food-based fundraisers.

“We want to make sure there’s consistency,” Senator Blanchard said in an interview. “This is not only about providing nutritional food for our children but teaching them good life skills and what the right choices are.”

If Congress acts before the summer break, some of the nutritional changes could make lunch better as soon as next fall.

The Department of Agriculture is also overhauling all school nutritional guidelines in an effort that is separate from the Child Nutrition Act but is intended to work in concert with the changes it will bring about.

The new meal standards, which haven’t been updated for 15 years, are being written by Agriculture Department staff now. Based on a report from the Institutes of Medicine, they will require more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and — for the first time in the national school food program’s history — limit the amount of calories in each meal.

“Look at the regulations now,” said Renee Hanks, food service director for the South Colonie School District in Albany. “The U.S.D.A. requires so many carbohydrates that we’re throwing whole wheat bread at them. We’re throwing extra crackers at them. If they aren’t out and active they can’t handle all those calories.”

But, she warned, adding new requirements for more expensive foods like fresh fruit had better come with more money.

Changes to the bureaucratic process might free up some money in school budgets, analysts said. For example, the amount of paperwork needed to assure certain lower-income children qualify for a free lunch will be reduced, and the cost of a meal for children who pay full price will probably increase. Extra training money already included in the proposed legislation should also help school kitchens operate more efficiently.

But whether more money will be added before the final bill is approved is in question. Officials at the Agriculture Department and various advocacy groups aren’t hopeful. Even if more money for the bill does appear, it will likely go toward the parts of the act that pay for hunger programs, not school lunch.

That doesn’t mean the conversation is necessarily over, said Rochelle Davis, founding executive director of the Healthy Schools Campaign, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for healthy school food. All the new nutritional requirements mean nothing if school districts cannot pay for them. Accepting the small increase in school food financing and calling it a victory lets Congress off the hook, she said.

“Look at the agony our country is going through over health care and the struggle to handle a sick nation,” she said. “We just have to connect the dots and get people eating right and get people moving. Healthy school food is a logical part of that.”

3:28 p.m. | Updated
An earlier version of this post referred incorrectly to the varieties of milk that would be allowed in school cafeterias under legislation in the Senate. Skim and 1 percent milk would be available, not just skim milk.